Behind The Masking Eyes
by Destiny-Scouts
Summary: In Aftershock 2, we only saw breif moments when Slade beat Terra up. This got me wondering, "What was he doing? What's going on in Terra's mind" Thus this one-shot was created. It kind of like a re-write only in Terra's POV. -Neriede


"Slade! I made it! I'm alive! I can't believe they almost beat me!"

The young apprentice was met by an unjustly blow and surprise and fear filled her as she sprawled on the ground.

"That was nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you"

He extended his arm and Terra, assuming that he would strike her again, raised her arms up to her face. She didn't expect what he had in mind for "teaching her a lesson". With a simple push of a button on his arm, Slade sent numerous jolts of electricity running through her already tired body. She screamed as the yellow and blue sparks crept up her arms and legs, up her spine and every where they licked her skin. Her chest thumped painfully, even after it ended.

"This is what happens when you fail. This is what happens to failures." With this he picked her up and threw her inhumanly toward a jagged wall.

The rocks dug into her skin momentarily before she fell to the ground. She moaned at the pain searing through her, struggling to pick herself up.

"You are my apprentice, and as such, will obey my ever will. I will not accept one who loses her battles."

Another shock sent her screaming again, her mind racing wildly, thinking of random things, random events from her life.

"_Look at them! They're so cute!"_

_Terra leaned on the glass window of the store, the huge eyes of puppies glistening up at her._

"_Wow! I wish I could take one home! They're adorable!" she smiled at one that was rolling around, its ears flopping about._

"_Yeah! Except Raven would kill us." Beastboy laughed as one of the dogs walked up to them and yipped a small bark through the window._

_Laughter was not short on supply._

"You will win next time. You will push yourself to eliminate them. You will not give them the chance to live."

He kicked her hard, causing her suit to start to unravel.

"You have no friends. I am the master in your life, not you."

_Stones and rocks bounced up and down as the ground shook. Terra looked up in horror to see everything shaking. People screamed all around her. Mud began to slide down the mountain, swallowing everything in its path._

"_This is all your fault! You said you could help us! You lied!" a mother cradling both her crying children in her arms screamed in anguish._

"_But…I was only trying to help!" Terra yelled her sorry explanation over the rumble of the mud slide that was heading right for them._

"_Leave us be; you've already cost us our homes!" the woman began running away, following the rest of the screaming villagers in panic._

_So Terra did. She ran and left. And she watched with tears running down her face as not a single villager survived. The rain fell miserably around her._

"_You don't have any friends." Beastboy's words pierced through her._

_But…he had promised……he had promised her! This was wrong! What was happening! It wasn't supposed to go like this!_

Terra weakly put her hand on a boulder, using it as support to bring herself up. She swayed uncertainly on the spot before receiving another blow to her stomach.

"You've failed me apprentice. I ordered you to eliminate the Titans. You did not. I commanded you to fight and you ran."

"You can't treat me like this!"

"Can't I?"

He struck her again, as if to say, "Watch me"

"Who else would want you? You've done horrible things. Unforgivable things. Where else could you go?"

He watched as she continued to fight the will to drop unconscious.

She stood up once more, trembling slightly, "Anywhere but here! I'm sick of fighting, and I'm sick of you!"

She grasped at her breastplate, pulling at it, desperate to rid herself of her connection with it. It refused to come off. Almost as if it were—

"You'll find that quite impossible. The suit's neural-interface has integrated into your nervous system. Into your _skin. _It's part of you. And so am I."

Terra gasped, letting go and stepping backwards, "No."

"You chose this life apprentice. It's too late to change your mind now. Far too late."

"But it's not too late for me to walk out the door."

She began to leave, walking away, but even so, a part of her knew it couldn't be that simple to walk out.

"I'm afraid it is my dear. You see, you no longer have any control in the matter."

He pushed another button on his arm and more sparks issued from her suit. They weren't as painful as the shocks before, in fact, they were smaller in size, but they were digging deeper than just the surface of her skin. She felt them winding themselves up and down her nerves, reaching into her brain, forcing her to move. Half of her brain was telling her to stop, but the other was telling her to move, to walk towards its master, and it was winning.

Slade's eyes followed her movement and her pitiful attempt to resist, tilting her chin up when she was close enough, forcing her to look at him, "You promised to fight at my side forever, and that's a promise I intend to make you keep."

And again, he hit her, crudely and unsympathetically. She hit the ground crying, only bothering to sit up and cry some more. Each tear streamed silently down her face as she screamed in her head, _What happened to you! How could you let yourself become this! Become like him! _

Because she had needed him. She realized it as she tightened her grip around her waist. She had needed him to gain control. But it was now that she saw just how awful and terrible the price had been. The price had been her freedom. It had also been her friends. She had hurt the people who had taken her under their wings.

_Beastboy's eyes bored into her own, asking her what was going on._

"_She is not your friend. She is my apprentice."_

_He still didn't seem to believe him. Mostly. Doubt _was_ staring to fill him. He turned to Terra for confirmation._

"_Terra?"_

It resonated in her mind, echoed in its distant corners, repeating itself to her, haunting her. Beastboy's last words to her as a friend.

"_Terra?"_

"_Terra?"_

"_Terra?"_

Why wouldn't they go away! Why wouldn't it stop! She cried even harder, wishing her pain could spill out as easily as her tears. The memories and the flashbacks were enough to make her want to die.

"Terra?"

Beastboy!

"Destroy me! Quick!"

He hadn't expected that, "What?"

"Come on! Isn't that what you came for! Do it now!"

When he didn't, a searing and repulsive sensation went surging through her. It was urging her to blast him, to _hurt_ him. The urge won, just like it had the first time it had taken hold of her. She saw her own hand rise to take the action and throw him several feet away into a boulder. It killed her inside. The small, crawling sparks were back, holding her back from running toward him.

"Forgive my apprentice. As usual, she can't control herself."

Now he wanted her to walk. He was going to make her hurt him again.

_No! Don't do it!_

Her legs didn't listen and carried her across the short distance between her and her once green friend. Slade was saying things, but she wasn't hearing the words; she was shaking, her will diminishing with every second until she was only faintly aware of what was going on around her. She was blacking out and Slade had her in his control. She would have gladly fallen on the ground and never woken up, had not been that Slade was controlling her to fight. She was dimly aware that she and Beastboy were in combat until he knocked her to the ground, shaking her mind from the blackness that had gripped it.

"You have to stop me Beastboy! Please, I don't want to fight anymore!"

Beastboy changed from his gorilla form to his normal one, anger flashing in his eyes, "Then don't let Slade control you!"

She looked away, not able to look him in the eye, "I can't."

"That's a lie! You always had a choice!"

A tower of rock came out of the ground, striking him away. He was quick to get back on his feet and approach her, stepping closer with every word he uttered.

"You chose to work for Slade, chose to betray us, and now you chosen to give him control! Slade isn't doing this Terra! You are!" he placed a hand on her shoulder.

"No!" her eyes glowed yellow as she shouted it.

She wasn't _letting_ him control her! She didn't want him to, it was that he was just too strong! It was too late to change, too late to reverse everything…right? Suddenly she heard something whimper. Her eyes widened as she saw her hand outstretched, dust parting to show Beastboy in his dog form, trapped under a pile of stones.

Had she done that? And…wait! Had Slade just ordered her to finish him off? Was she actually obeying him? She was; she was walking, getting closer and closer. And…and…it was all her fault. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Beastboy changed back to his normal form, "Terra, no!"

"He's too powerful! I can't stop him!"

"Yes you can! It's your power, not his! You can still control it! You can still choose to do the right thing!"

"It's too late."

Was it? Beastboy watched in horror as a huge spike made of rock formed above him in a position to strike.

"STOP!"

It rang through the room, bouncing off the walls and all around her.

_Robin?_

"Strike apprentice! Now!"

"Terra! No!"

She looked wildly around her, seeing Robin's bo staff out.

"It'll be the last thing you ever do!" Raven emerged from the shadows, energy surrounding her hands.

"I gave you an order!" Slade was becoming impatient, "Do it!"

But she didn't want it to be the last thing she ever did! She didn't want to do it at all!

Starfire's voice was next, "Please Terra! No!"

She also was in a position to strike, flying above with her hands and eyes glowing.

"Don't do it! Don't, do it!" Cyborg's voice was the last to reach her ears clearly, his cannon reaching out.

Everything began to swirl around her, the voices, the room, her thoughts. She didn't want to do it, but she didn't have any choice and it was her fault. All her fault. Her head throbbed; their voices crowded around her, never mind the fact that she wasn't really listening to what they were saying now.

_It was all around her. The mirrors stared at her, her own face reflected endlessly, closing in around her. It was her, and what she had become and what she was slowly becoming. The road she had started traveling was a friendless and lonely one and her own reflection showed her choice to walk down it._

Beastboy broke through her perplexing memory, "It's your life Terra. Your choice. It's never too late to change."

It wasn't? But it was…Slade had taken control of her. There was no breaking the hold he had on her. There was absolutely no reversing this. She stared at Beastboy, the spike hanging above him. Could she really go through with watching herself drive it through him? No….she couldn't bear to do it. But the question was not whether she'd be able to watch it. The question was could she stop it from happening?

"Sorry Beastboy. For everything I've done."

With a yell, something within her snapped. Her brain and limbs suddenly felt different, as if they were independent to do whatever Terra wanted them to do. She had broken Slade's link. In her new-found freedom, she angrily threw the spike in Slade's direction, who jumped away from it. She had done it. She was free! Almost… She still had her wrongs to right.

She yelled and began attacking Slade in any possible way she could. She threw rocks at him, hit him at every opportunity. She didn't really pay attention to what she was doing, just so long as it helped pay Slade back for all the damage he had done to her. Rock after rock she hurled, until she had forced him off a ledge.

_Did I actually just win?_ She thought, cautiously edging toward the Slade's falling place.

Her answer came in the form of an attack as Slade leaped up from the crevice and knocked her to the ground. He grabbed her by her suit and held her up, as if she was an object, subject to being property.

_I will not allow you to control my life._

"You can't control me anymore!" she stressed each word, her eyes glowing, hair flailing behind her.

The energy pulsed out of her, rumbling, lighting the whole room, breaking the very tower of stone that Slade stood upon. When the light faded, Slade was gone, and Terra fell to her knees on a solitary slate of rock. Pieces of the ceiling fell. The rumbling wasn't stopping.

"Terra's power! It's triggered a volcano!" Robin alerted, waves of burning orange rising variously around the room.

"Big enough to take out the entire city! And way to big for us to stop!" Cyborg calculated on him robotic arm.

Which meant that she couldn't leave. She had to fix what she'd broken. She numbly knew that the Titans were leaving to safety. All but Beastboy.

"Terra!"

She slowly flew her platform to him.

"Come on! We gotta go!"

_That's impossible for me now._

"I have to stay"

He looked at her, "No."

"I'm the only one who can stop it."

He begged for her to come with him, "Please Terra, you can't, it's too late!"

She pushed a lock of her hair back, revealing the first smile she had worn in a very long time, "It's never too late."

Then she hugged him, catching him slightly off guard. She never wanted to let go. He hugged back, a signal that he understood that she had to stay, but he too didn't want to leave her behind.

"You are the best friend I ever had."

She let go of him and looked at him for the last time. He backed away slowly, making their last moment last as long as he could. With one last thought, Terra spread her arms out wide, calling upon her powers for the final time.

…_I'm free. No one can change that…_

……………………………………………………………………………..

The place was eerily silent. Something had happened here. Something that had been very important. The rocks and stones seemed to emit a knowledge of a story and the refusal to tell it. Right in the middle of the room was a statue.

Almost anyone who looked at it would think that surely whoever had carved it had been very skilled; every detail clearly visible: the hair fanning out behind, the arms stretched out wide, the expression of pain and melancholy…

If you looked very closely at her face, you'd see a crack, running from the bottom of the right eye and down the cold, rough cheek, almost like a frozen tear. The petals of a bouquet of paper-wrapped flowers fluttered in the wind at the feet of the statue. Below it read a memorable plate:

Terra

A Teen Titan

A True Friend

Eh….This turned out way more angsty than I wanted it to be. You might have noticed that a lot of the lines in here were from Aftershock II. This was supposed to be a rewrite of it from Terra's point of view of what happened during commercials and inside her mind. It definitely didn't turn out the way I wanted to….. you guys are the only ones to see this before I delete it.

* * *

Sun, your driving me crazy! You said you sere going to post this! So I waited and waited so that I could delete it as soon as you posted it! But you never did-sighs- For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I was going to delete this forever instead of posting it, because it turned out so horrible. Then when Sun said she wanted a copy of it before I deleted it, so I sent her a copy and deleted the orginal. Then (to my horror) she announces the next day at school that she's going to post it! So I came up with a plan to delete it as soon as she posted it. BUT SHE DIDN'T! So I rooted around the Recycle Bin on my Desktop and restored... so...yeah... 


End file.
